“Some people just want to see the world burn”

Summary: This is the first post in a series. The next is 4GW in India – more people who want to watch the world burn. It’s not about India, or specific religions. This is the dark side of humanity, a battle that has to be fought each generation. Sometimes the battle goes poorly, as these killers find homes in both sides of the many non-trinitarian (or 4th generation wars) that rage across the globe.

.

Many people who have neither traveled through the third world nor read Martin van Creveld’s new book, Culture of War, did not take this seriously:

“He can’t be bought, bullied or negotiated with… some people just want to see the world burn.”
— Alfred (Michael Caine) speaking of the Joker, in The Dark Knight (2008)

What would they make of this insight in the CIA? Perhaps their reaction would be like that of critic James Bowman:

Are there such men? Conceivably. But history affords no example of them, outside of comic books and the movies, attaining the sort of power it would take actually to burn the world, or even any very significant part of it.

Reality seems to provide a natural check upon such people in the form of a shortage of those who both (a) share their psychosis and (b) are willing to play the part of humble assistant — rather than starring as the evil genius themselves — in accomplishing their purposes. This problem for the would-be evil geniuses — a reassurance to the rest of us — is what creates the distinctive unreality of Mr Nolan’s movie.

How wonderful it would be to live in Mr. Bowman’s world. A world in which there would be no people like Babu Bajrangi, who says in this interview published on 3 November 2007 in the Indian newspaper Tehelka (Wikipedia entry). These people flourish in our world, finding homes in all sides of all 4GW conflicts. These are our enemies. The practitioners of real-politics who ally with them betray our civilisation and do us no good.

Not so, as we see in the thread and on sites like Bill Quick — who just require that kills have a good excuse. See the update at the end of this post.

Back to the interview:

Bajrangi: My role was as follows: I was the first to start the [Naroda] Patiya operation… We and the local residents were all together. Patiya is just half a kilometre away from my home… I had gone to Godhra when it happened… I could not bear what I saw… The next day, we gave them a fitting reply…

TEHELKA: What were you unable to tolerate in Godhra?

Bajrangi: Any person who saw the Godhra kaand [massacre] would have felt like just killing them at once, hacking them apart… that’s how it was…

TEHELKA: You were there?

Bajrangi: Yes, yes, I was with them… So the Godhra kaand happened and after what I saw, I just came back to Naroda and we took revenge. … We and the Chharas carried out the Patiya massacre… After that, we all went to jail… People gave us a lot of money after we were jailed.

… TEHELKA: The day the Muslims were killed…

Bajrangi: I spoke to Jaideepbhai 11 or 12 times… aur humne tabiyat se kaata… Haldighati bana di thi [and we killed at will, turned the place into Haldighati]… And I am proud of it, if I get another chance, I will kill even more.

TEHELKA: Where was Jaideepbhai camping then?

Bajrangi: Jaideepbhai was sitting at Dhanwantri, which is Pravinbhai’s dispensary, he was there… in Bapunagar… There he was and I didn’t even tell him that we were going to do this… In Naroda and Naroda Patiya, we didn’t spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire, we set them on fire and killed them… That’s what we did… Up till then, they didn’t know what was happening; when they got to hear of how many had been killed, they got scared • • • There is a distance of about half a kilometre between Naroda [Patiya] and Naroda Gaon… We did a lot at both places… must have butchered not less than… Then we dumped the corpses into a well…

TEHELKA: Tell us how it was all done… revolvers… cylinders…

Bajrangi: The cylinders were theirs [the Muslims’]… Whichever house we entered, we just grabbed the cylinder and fired at it, and, dhadak, they exploded… We had guns in any case… I can’t tell you what a good time it was… But four of our activists died in it… No hearing took place even in that…

TEHELKA: Did you climb to the top of a masjid and tie a pig there?

Bajrangi:We rammed an entire tanker into it… the tanker was fully laden… We rammed that tanker inside…

TEHELKA: It was a petrol tanker, no?

Bajrangi: It was diesel… We drove a whole diesel tanker in and then set [the mosque] on fire…

TEHELKA: Meaning, it was the tanker explosion which set Patiya on fire?

Bajrangi: In the masjid…

TEHELKA: In the masjid…

Bajrangi: As for the rest of it, I was in charge at the time… Whatever I wanted to do, I did…

TEHELKA: At the pit, was oil… Those people had gathered there…

Bajrangi: It was a huge pit… You could enter it from one side but you couldn’t climb out at the other end… They were all there together… They started clinging to each other… Even while they were dying, they told each other, you die too, what are you going to be saved for, you die too… so the number of deaths increased.

TEHELKA: Then people poured oil in…

Bajrangi: Oil and burning tyres…

TEHELKA: Where did the oil come from?

Bajrangi: Oh that… We had lots of material with us… we filled lots of jerrycans in advance… From the petrol pump, the night before… Petrol pump owners gave us petrol and diesel for free…

• • • TEHELKA: Muslims were hacked to pieces…

Bajrangi: Hacked, burnt, set on fire, many things were done… many… We believe in setting them on fire because these bastards say they don’t want to be cremated, they’re afraid of it, they say this and that will happen to them… I have just one wish… one last wish…. Let me be sentenced to death… I don’t want to be incarcerated… I don’t care if I’m hanged… Give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura [a Muslim dominated are], where seven or eight lakh of these people stay… I will finish them off … Let a few more of them die… At least 25-50,000 should die…

TEHELKA: How many witnesses have testified against you?

Bajrangi: Fourteen Muslims and 16 policemen… Out of the 14 Muslims, some have moved to Juhapura… They’ve left Patiya, they don’t have the guts to stay there, defying us… The rest have gone to Karnataka… They got money after all, Rs 7 lakheach… Narendrabhai never said how much they would be given… He announced [the compensation package] then gave out cheques of Rs 20,000 each and that’s where things got stuck… Afterwards, he gave nothing to anyone… But then the Central government supported them…

• • • TEHELKA: In other words, the way [you] have killed will go down in history.

Bajrangi: Arrey hamari FIR me likha gaya hai… ek woh pregnant thi, usko to humne chir diya thha b*******d sala… Unko dikhaya ki kya hota hai… ki hum log ko tumne maara to hum tumko kya pratikaar de sakte hain… hum khichdi kadhi wale nahin hai [It has been written in my FIR… there was this pregnant woman, I slit her open, sisterf****r… Showed them what’s what… what kind of revenge we can take if our people are killed… I am no feeble rice-eater]… didn’t spare anyone… they shouldn’t even be allowed to breed… I say that even today… Whoever they are, women, children, whoever… Nothing to be done with them but cut them down. Thrash them, slash them, burn the bastards… Hindus can be bad… Hindus can be bad, and I’m saying that because, as I see it, Hindus are as wicked as those people are… Many of them wasted time looting… Arrey, [the idea is] don’t keep them alive at all, after that everything is ours…

TEHELKA: And some people also raped…

Bajrangi: No, there were no rapes…

TEHELKA: One or two Chharas may have…

Bajrangi: If some Chharas took some women, that’s a different matter… We were marching in groups… There was no place to rape anyone there… Everyone was on a killing spree… we were killing, hacking… There were lanes where we had to face Muslims… there would be a confrontation, they’d fight back with all their strength…The moment we’d killed a few, we’d move on… In this melée, if some girl was trying to run away and if a Chhara caught her, then that’s another matter… That day, it was like what happened between Pakistan and India… There were bodies everywhere… it was a sight to be seen, but it wasn’t something to be filmed, in case it got into someone’s hands… There was a video-wala there, some mediawala, we set him on fire too… Lots of those miyas [Muslims] deceived us… They’d chant Jai Mata Di and get away… that happened too… they’d put tilaks on their foreheads and shout Jai Shri Ram, Jai Mata Di….

… Today too I am fighting against Muslims and will continue to do so… I have nothing to do with politics… What I say is this: the VHP is an organisation… a Hindu organisation… Our politics should be limited to killing Muslims, beating them up…

TEHELKA: How do you feel after you have killed Muslims…

Bajrangi: Maza aata hai na, saheb [I enjoy it]… I came back after I killed them them, called up the home minister and went to sleep… I felt like Rana Pratap, that I had done something like Maharana Pratap… I’d heard stories about him, but that day I did what he did myself.

Forgiveness

Many people forgive these killers if they have a good excuse. For example Bill Quick at the Daily Pundit says {change notice: Quick says that the original excerpt did not fairly represent his comments; so I have changed this to show his entire entry}:

Since the specific example chosen is a retaliatory massacre of Muslims, I’d agree this wouldn’t be my first choice for nihilistic evil, either.

In fact, I think it is quite wrong-headed. As reported, it’s not even a good example of what Fabius thinks he is talking about. His example of “Joker-style” evil says (in repeated variations):

Bajrangi: My role was as follows: I was the first to start the [Naroda] Patiya operation… We and the local residents were all together. Patiya is just half a kilometre away from my home… I had gone to Godhra when it happened… I could not bear what I saw… The next day, we gave them a fitting reply…

TEHELKA: What were you unable to tolerate in Godhra?

Bajrangi: Any person who saw the Godhra kaand [massacre] would have felt like just killing them at once, hacking them apart… that’s how it was…

In other words, the villain of Fabus’ piece makes it clear the massacre he led was in response to a previous massacre committed on his people by Muslims.

Fabius seems most upset by the savagery of the response, and the lack of contrition on the part of the leader of the respondees. But that is not Joker-style “let the world burn” evil. That is human-style “let the enemy burn for what he has done to us.” And that response is what such savagery as practiced by Islamofascist terror eventually pushes even highly civilized peoples to do.

If your god tells you that you must slaughter innocents, don’t be surprised if the god of the innocents tells them they must reply in kind. Or, less irrationally, a millennia-deep form of common sense – kill them lest they kill us again.

I think Fabius, normally a perspicacious observer of the world, is confused here.

Well I guess the killing was OK then, since it was in response to a previous massacre! I thought it was just soft-headed liberals who excused crimes on the basis of such things. Perhaps Quick will write a similar note about “human-style desire to have nice things” when his house is burgled, or “human-style desire to spread his genes” when his daughter is raped.

My goodness, these pompous puffheads scream when you poke them, don’t they? And then, as such folks often do, resort to mischaracterizations and outright lies.

A repeat, for those keeping score: Fabius wrote a post that purported to talk about Joker-style “let the world burn” nihilistic violence – in other words, violence for the sake of violence. If he had any other meaning, it certainly wasn’t obvious to any fair-minded reader, or so it seems to me.

Then, as an example of such nihilistic violence, he coughs up a bloody massacre that occurred in response to another bloody massacre. This is hardly “nihilistic” violence, or violence simply for the sake of violence. This is violence with a cause and an intended effect.

And when I point this out – in tone that are for me quite muted and reasonable – Fabius responds by claiming that I excuse the second massacre, that I think it was “okay.” No, but I do understand why it happened, and that as an example of Joker-style, let the world burn, nihilistic violence, it was a real flub.

And despite Fabius’ even more wrong-headed response to me, it still is.

Note: I have changed the “update” above to show his entire entry. My apologies to him, as I thought my original excerpt gave a fair summary of his post.

For more information

To read other articles about these things, see the FM reference page on the right side menu bar. Of esp interest these days:

The Hindu-Muslim tensions in India date back to the emergence of Islam itself. If you want to know some factual arguments on some aspects of the destruction of the the native culture and people on the Indian sub-continent:

The movement for the restoration of the Ramajanmabhumi Temple at Ayodhya has brought to the fore a suppressed chapter of India?s history, namely, the large-scale destruction of Hindu temples1 by the Islamised invaders. This chapter is by no means closed. The Appendix to this book provides details of many temples destroyed by Muslims all over Bangladesh as recently as October-November 1989. Currently, temples, or whatever had remained of them, are meeting a similar fate in the Kashmir valley.

This chapter, however, though significant, was only a part of the Muslim behaviour-pattern as recorded by Muslim historians of medieval India. The other parts were: 1) mass slaughter of people not only during war but also after the armies of Islam had emerged victorious; 2) capture of large numbers of non-combatant men, women and children as booty and their sale as slaves all over the Islamic world; 3) forcible conversion to Islam of people who were in no position to resist; 4) reduction to the status of zimmis or non-citizens of all those who could not be converted and imposition of inhuman disabilities on them; 5) emasculation of the zimmis by preventing them from possessing arms; 6) impoverishment of the zimmis through heavy discriminatory taxes and misappropriation of a major part of what the peasants produced; 7) ruination of the native and national culture of the zimmis by suppressing and holding in contempt all its institutions and expressions.

Nor is this behaviour pattern a thing of the past. It persisted even after the Muslim rule was over. The Muslim revivalist movements in the nineteenth century, particularly in Bengal, tried to repeat, as far as they could, the performance of the medieval Muslim swordsmen and sultans. More recently, after the Islamic state of Pakistan was carved out, Hindus have been forced to leave their ancestral homes, en masse from its western wing and in a continuous stream of refugees from its eastern wing, now an independent Islamic state of Bangladesh that came into being with the help of India. Hindu temples and other cultural institutions have more or less disappeared from Pakistan, while they continue to be under constant attack in Bangladesh.

How to understand this behaviour pattern so persistently followed over a thousand years under very different conditions and so consistent in its expression? What is its deeper ideological source?

It is rooted in Islam?s religious teachings, its theology and its religious laws; it derives from its peculiar conception of momins and kafirs, from its doctrines of Jihad, Daru?l-Islam and Daru?l-harb, and from what it regards as the duty of a Muslim state. Hindu India is called upon to make a deeper study of Islam than it has hitherto done. It can neglect this task at its own peril.

The present volume makes no pretence of presenting such a study, but by choice restricts itself mainly to the study of Hindu temples destroyed and desecrated and converted into mosques and khanqahs without overlooking Muslims? ideology of iconoclasm; here and there, it also mentions other theological props and concomitants of the iconoclastic ideology. In the book Ayodhya retain its importance, but it does not occupy the centre of discussion. In dealing with its subject, it exercises complete fidelity to truth; unlike secularist and Marxist writers, it does not believe in re-writing and fabricating history. Its aim is to raise the informational level of our people and to make them better aware of the more persistent ideological forces at work.

Mahavira Jayanti, Publisher, 7 April 1990

Footnotes: Hindu Temples in the present context include temples belonging to all sects of Sanatana Dharma – Brahmanical, Buddhist, Jain and the rest.

My point was that the Hindu-Muslim conflict in India is much older than any Western observers might think and it involves much more large scale destruction of lives, property and the whole native culture than anybody could imagine.

All this history has to be forgotten, rather than brought to light repeatedly. The 6 million casualty in the Jewish holocaust is nothing compared to the casualties in the violent spread of Islam throughout the Middle East and over almost all of South Asia.

Jihad wasn’t designed to be used by small militant organizations to terrorize unarmed people. It was designed for world conquest by the followers of Hazrath Mohammed.

As Muslims correctly point out there isn’t ay such as “Islamic Terrorism”. Islam itself is a violent supra national world conquest scheme that involves slaughter of all opposing groups that come in its way.
Reading the Koran will tell you much more than reading essays about terror attacks on Indian territory.
.
.Fabius Maximus replies: I know nothing of Indian history. But the West has seen more than its share of wars — including religious wars. In my opinion folks like Babu Bajrangi just want to see the world burn, and find causes that allow them to burn and kill. Such things bring no help or hope to anybody, on any “side.”

I am reminded of the Fascist credo of Jose Astray ‘Long Live Death!’ and, even more horrifically, of the Aum Shin Rikyo cult save they saw killing you as setting you free before the Armageddon to be ‘purified’.

The reasons do not matter, when one takes up that view motivation is not a mitigating factor – you have decided to reclaim all your liberties and rights from the Law of Nature and have returned to that barbaric state of being against all mankind. Terrorists, pirates, it does not matter what you name them, their actions are war against all… let us hope we can realize this before we, too, sink like the end of the Bronze Age or Rome or so many Empires as to be countless that thought themselves so powerful against the beast that is man. And lost.
.
.Fabius Maximus replies: I question two aspects of this.

(1) Embrace of death is a commonplace exhortation of leaders before battle. Lieutenant-Colonel Mustafa Kemal commanded the 19th Turkish Division at Gallipoli. At the Battle of the Landing he successfully exhorted his troops with the command ‘I don’t order you to attack, I order you to die.” He went on to found the republic of Turkey.

A terrific post that proves beyond a shadow of doubt that there are people willing and able to be mass murderers regardless of which side of a conflict one may be on.

Having said that, there can be no doubt that Islam is built around a single idea, destruction of anyone and any culture that does not surrender and become Muslim. Only Muslims imbued with a western philosophy of live and let live can stop the slaughter from within, because the “terrorists” will not stop until they are actively stopped by civilized society.

ajacksonian, while you are mistaken about Jose Millan Astray (the cofounder of the Spanish Foreign Legion, for those unaware) your point is otherwise well taken. The Falange Espanola Tradicionalista was not a Fascist organization, and certainly not a nihilist one; it was rather a reaction to secular Socialism and Communism.
.
.FM note, from Wikipedia: The Falange Española Tradicionalista de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista (FET y de las JONS, Spanish for “Traditionalist Spanish Falange and of the Unions of the National-Syndicalist Offensive”) was the official political party founded by Francisco Franco 19 April 1937, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War.

I dont believe FM meant to suggest that Muslim’s in general have these beliefs or would act this way. But he has confused the issue by equating a fictional character who plans to dominate the world with a merely local psychotic religious soldier. Bowman’s statement is wrong on other grounds — there are plenty of historical examples of megalomaniac leaders who thought they could dominate the world (Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, some would say Bush-Cheney as well).

FM’s comment that these people find “homes on all sides of all 4GW conflicts. . . (and they) are our enemies” confuses me. Does that mean that generally 4GW resistance movements are ok, except for those individual sociopaths who may be drawn to them? That is certainly not the tenor of current US doctrine, which equates resistance with terror and sees all of it as the enemy.
.
.Fabius Maximus replies: (1) I absolutely agree with your first sentence.

(2) As for the second paragraph, I meant that “folks who want the world to burn” are our enemies.

“Does that mean that generally 4GW resistance movements are ok, except for those individual sociopaths who may be drawn to them? That is certainly not the tenor of current US doctrine, which equates resistance with terror and sees all of it as the enemy.”

(3) I see no basis for this statement. The US government has supported many 4GW groups, most spectacularly the the Islamic resistance to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The near-term effects we wonderful for us; the long-term effects might prove disasterous for us.

One Islamic tenet is the genocide of idolators, and polytheists. This is a commandmant from God. So it is not surprising that the polytheists should deal with the problem in a way they feel will actually work? This has nothing to do with wanting the world to burn, and everything to do with “Stop killing us in the name of your religion you fuckers”.

There is an asymmetry in this conflict that cannot be ignored. The native polytheists do not have religious tenets that call for the extermination of non-believers in their religions.

The Muslims need only reject the infallibility of their religious text that calls for genocide, the Quran, for peace to be an acheivable goal. Unfortunately, that’s like expecting a elephant to fly.

As long as they preach the infallibility of the Quran at least some followers are going to try to do its bidding, and that can only lead to murder.
.
.Fabius Maximus replies: Perhaps you should read about western history before forecasting about liklihood of elephants flying. Just to mention two bursts of religious fever:
* the Crusadesesp the Albigensian Crusade (southern France)
* the wars following the “Prostestant Reformation”, esp the 30 Years War.

We evolved beyond this; so can the more violent wing of modern Islam (which is not the unitary entity sketched in your cartoon-like comment.

I think that Bowman’s opinion is more-or-less correct, in the vast majority of cases, and if one is speaking about rising to positions of significant power.

Charles Manson is not an apt example, nor are many of the others. While having a significant degree of power over their own small followings, they were actually good examples of how their own actions ended up limiting and stopping their rise. In addition, the other famous examples, such as Hitler, et al, do not apply either, as their goal was not to precipitate the end-of-days.

However, it is important to remember that this is in the vast majority of cases, and does not preclude the possibility of circumstances, or circumstances combined with a certain type of a prodigy, that will allow, or maybe even ordain, the rise to truly significant power of one who does just want to see the world burn. One might point out the rhetoric of Ahmedenijad, which, if he means it (and I think he does), shows him to want that sight. Only time will tell if the self-limiting factors in play will be enough to stop that rise.

I submit that with the advent of nuclear weapons, the normal course of events that limit these things has been subverted to a large degree. It seems that in a very short time, if not already, that many of these individuals will not have to rise to the point where they are brought down by limiting factors, and may be able to perform serious and consequential work towards their ends. This has introduced a much large degree of uncertainty to these affairs, and I am pretty sure that most people do not appreciate that to the degree necessary.

It also must be considered that even though these anarchist individuals may be self limiting, there is always a large cadre available to leaders who may find it convenient to see certain portions of the world burn, even though they aren’t looking for the total. Prisons are filled with such people, and the effect I speak of was on display in Iraq for several years.

As far as the Bajrangi is concerned, note that he was responding to something. This is not condoning his actions, but he did not act spontaneously, and the above mentioned individuals will. In fact, by definition, that is their goal, while Bajrangi was originally revenge motivated.

Perhaps it would be useful to remember that in days of yore, wars were very often existential. Complete destruction of the other had to be accomplished, or your lot would be extinction. Bajrangi’s actions and feelings are consistent with this, and he seems to say so. It is only recently in history where the concept of limited warfare has achieved a prominence. In fact, if Islam does not achieve its own renaissance shortly, given that nukes are in the mix, we may see just such a war develop. Of course, this is dependent on Western societies being sufficiently focused on their own continuity. This last is far from clear at the moment – even if they do muster the fortitude, it may be too late. Unfortunately, as Brian Mack mentioned above, there are things about the Koran which may prevent the Muslim renaissance we all hope for. I for one am hoping that the common humanity that runs through all societies, that of a mother and father wising to see their children grow up and live a decent life, will prevail amongst the Muslim world. Truly this is the majority of people anywhere. However, the current leaders in the Islamic world are, by and large, of the first two varieties.
.
.Fabius Maximus replies: This is over the 250 word limit, but has some interesting points.

“As far as the Bajrangi is concerned, note that he was responding to something. This is not condoning his actions, but he did not act spontaneously, and the above mentioned individuals will.”

This misses the key point, IMO! The psychos under discussion will, as I note above, tend to attach themselves to a pre-existing cause in order to gain support. “Let the world burn” attracts few followers. Hence my observation that these poeple thrive in 4GW wars, which give them an opportunity to gain power.

Of course statistics apply. Most will die unknown; only a few will kill on a scale sufficient to attract notice; only a tiny tiny number will gain control of large movements or even nation-states. But the latter group, like an extraordinarily virulent plague virus, can do awesome damage.

talking without knowledge is as bad as slaughter of people mentioned in the above post. The shallow allegation of “genocide of idolators ” is as damaging to the world peace as the massacre done above for sometimes the pen is mightier than the sword while the mindset is mightier. And if the mindset is wrong then this disease of hatred will plague us for generations.

These are some of the quranic verses which throw the allegation of “genocide of idolators” out of the window.

““Let there be no compulsion in religion: ” (The Noble Quran, 2:256)

“Say, ‘The truth is from your Lord’: Let him who will believe, and let him who will, reject (it):……”(The Noble Quran, 18:29)“

“And I will not worship that which ye have been wont to worship, Nor will ye worship that which I worship. To you be your Way, and to me mine.” (The Noble Quran, 109:1-6)“

“If it had been thy Lord’s will, they would all have believed,- all who are on earth! wilt thou then COMPEL mankind, against their will, to believe! (The Noble Quran, 10:99)“

“God does not forbid you from showing kindness and dealing justly with those who have not fought you about religion and have not driven you out of your homes. God loves just dealers. (The Noble Quran, 60:8

“But if the enemy incline towards peace, do thou (also) incline towards peace, and trust in God: for He is One that heareth and knoweth (all things). (The Noble Quran, 8:61)“

I can go on and on with these verses but it is of no use if people are so inclined towards stubbornness that they refuse to believe that Quran doesn’t encourage violence even if proved otherwise by giving clear verses from Quran itself.

For my fellow hindu brethren, stop pretending as if india belongs exlusively to you. Give a chance to the muslims to love india because it is as much as theirs as it is yours. Hatred towards them only succeeds in isolating them.

For my fellow muslim brethren, stop pretending as if you have exclusive rights to heaven. Come out of your vain religious bickering and adapt to the evolving world. Love others so that they love you back and follow the Quran to its every word so that peace would be established.

For my fellow human beings sitting at western news stations, curse you all. May you all suffer the cumulative pains of the world. Curse you for your crafty, biased, pre – assumed, unjust and unfair news reporting.

For the noble people sitting at white house, thank you for killing 2 million people in Hiroshima and nagasaki, thank you for killing 750,000 people in iraq and afghanistan, thank you for letting israel kill 1.4 million people in palestine since 1948, thank you for finding weapons of mass destruction in iraq, thank you for finding bin laden, thank you for using chemical weapons in vietnam so much so that the land is left barren even after decades, thank you for veto -ing every peace treaty that was proposed in middle east. Even hitler is put to shame and belittled in front of your “noble” deeds. Your noble deeds are so great that they are on par with natural calamities like tsunamies, cyclones and earthquakes. Thank you for all this.

I’m not sure quite what the connection to MvC’s Culture of War is here. In CoW MvC argues that men have a innate drive for violent game playing that cannot be ignored. Perhaps it is the inability to control and shape this drive (by claiming it does not exist, among other things) that creates situations where mass killing and chaos predominate.

In modern and ancient merc forces as well as criminal organizations (which can fall under 4GW if you wish) violence is seen as an end and enjoyed. I believe it takes a clear enemy with some historical roots for mass killing to take place (either ethnic, relgious, or class enemy), and although psychopathic personalities can find incredible enjoyment in the violence that ensues, I suspect that it is usually persons of more intelligence at the top exploiting the tension that they have created or inherited.

The more common personality I think you see is the leader who thrives in the midst of chaos because persons need inspiration and leadership, and who offers this via cultic practices and charismatic personality. The story of the LRA in the Uganda might be one example, and ‘religion’ can be created and exploited to serve as a justification for mass killing.

Muslims are an obvious target for this and of course have been on both sides historically.
.
.Fabius Maximus replies: So much confusion results from thinking of “human nature” as a standard, like “grade A eggs.” Think of our love of violence as a factor in human nature which varies in individual. Some have it strongly, some almost not at all. Perhaps people who just want to see the world burn have this in extreem amounts.

We can label them “psychopathic personalities.” Problem solved! Perhaps calling them “mad dogs” would be equally logical and efficacious.

This comment thread has veered wildly out of control, but as to the original topic, I don’t think the critic’s point is very valid.

First of all, I know people who “just want to see the world burn” of my personal acquaintance. They do not “conceivably” exist. They do exist, in large numbers. Perhaps the office life has sheltered the critic from their existence.

Second, his point is correct about how they don’t actually come to anything because there are too many chiefs and not enough native Americans. But the Joker is not a warlord, he’s just a guy who shoots up a city. A more apt observation would have been that even sadistic anarchists fear death (outside of the movies).

“talking without knowledge is as bad as slaughter of people mentioned in the above post. ”

Comment by theoworkshop — 17 January 2009 @ 7:15 pm

No, I don’t think so. I think the slaughter is a little more bad. Let’s try this experiment: You talk without knowledge, I slaughter you and your whole family. I kill you last – so all this while you can be talking without knowledge – and before I kill you, while you are looking at the corpses of your family, I will ask you who you think is worse, me or you.

What a purely stupid thing to say. This is so stupid that it refutes anything you have ever or will ever say or write or post, so I’m not going to bother to go look at your links, nor I imagine will anyone else unless they want a good laugh.

By the way, we did find WMD (here), {snip} I’m an Iraq war veteran, and I’m damned glad we found them.

Hows this: Thank you for appreciating what it took to stop the Imperialist Japanese, (who incidentally ATTACKED THIS COUNTRY), Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italians from running roughshod over Europe, an protecting Western Europe from becoming annexed to the Soviet Union.

Since you’re so wrapped around the axle over body counts, where’s your hissy fit over the 6 million killed by Hitler, the 36 million killed by Stalin, the thousands killed by Saddam Hussein,(some with chemical weapons) or the 2 million killed by the Khmer Rouge?

We did kill alot of bad guys (READ al Qaeda and Taliban) in Iraq and Afghanistan. Don’t expect me to lose sleep over it either, sweetpea.

For one thing, it’s impossible to avoid civilian deaths in war. How in the fuck are you going to do that, when the enemy mingles with and is often part of the civilian population? You got a detector for that?

Thousands of deaths could have been prevented had the Japs not attacked Pearl Harbor or if Islamofascist muslims hadn’t attacked on 9/11. Thousands of Nazis, fascist Italians, and Imperialist Japanese wouldn’t have died had we not fought back. Thousands of muslim terrorists wouldn’t be dead had we not invaded the region of the world that produces the fucksticks.

If you have a problem with that, then you’re pretty dense.

Newsflash, Mansoor: Enemies don’t like it when you fight back, especially on their own turf. They threw us a sucker punch on 9/11 and deserve every death they get. It’s just a shame we didn’t scorch the Middle Eastern cesspool to expedite the process. You may have a vision of a world Caliphate, but don’t expect the rest of us to follow suit.
.
.Fabius Maximus replies: This is going far off-track. We’re talking about individuals, not groups — ethnic or religous. The blood shed by almost every group (there are a few exceptions) takes the discussion off-topic, as everybody attempts to shed the blood shed by “us” — and villify the blood shed by “them.” It’s not that all are equivalent; but this is not the thread for that discussion.

The only problem I have with this piece is that slaughter of Muslims is ALWAYS self-defense. Islam is a world-conquering ideology. I can’t unreservedly condemn the rare modern cases where people push back against the Muhammadans.

sfcmac
If you there was evidence for WMD then it would be shown every time somebody queried their existence and Fox news would have a permanent page highlighting this. If the DoD is keeping its evidence under wraps for some reason then the President has only them to blame if nobody is aware of it.
Nice to see that as a military person you advocate the wholesale destruction of an entire area of our world, just so you can get some bad guys. That is a very medieval attitude. “Kill them all God will know his own.” was the attitude of a christian bishop and you seem to be a good christian. ALL religions are intolerant at heart because only one can be right and usually their gods are pretty jealous. People can quote centuries old scribblings at me all they want the reality is that dogmatism leads to massacre and communism, nazism, islam, judaism and christianity are all very similar in foundation and structure they evidentially lead to genocide and attrocity.
Enemies don’t like it when you fight back you are right, but by indiscriminately killing everyone you are creating more enemy fighters and losing allies.
So mac do like seeing the world burn?

I think what we consider to be disorder and chaos is what other people consider an attempt for creating a new world order. Take for example the Nazis: They wanted to conquer Europe, they put the whole world on fire and killed millions. The Nazi rhetoric was full of nihilistic violence (world dominance or total annihilation) and they had the means for it. But still – they didn’t want to destroy the world, just replace the old world order with a new Aryan world order. Unfortunately that also meant the destruction of millions, including (but not only) the Jews.

My point is what we consider to be wanton violence without sense and purpose might actually serve a purpose. But I also want to stress that this purpose by itself might be odd or even mad for outsiders (like the idea of an Aryan supremacy) or that the means could overtake the goals. This also includes leaders in a democracy. I remember a quote from SAC-commander Thomas Power regarding the question of restraint in case of a nuclear war with the Soviets: “Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!”

These sort of people, who just want to see the world burn, are what’s called “nihilists”.

They exist, and will always exist.

What changes, in different times and different cultures, is whether the culture at large inhibits and constrains them, leaving them no avenue for open expression of their goals and making it clear that they are *in the wrong* and *will be resisted* — or whether they will be *enabled*, given ready-made intellectual and moral rationalizations for their hatred, and supplied with accomplices and morally disarmed sheep for the slaughter.

Historically, the nihilists were enabled by means of religious belief. If everyone sees themselves as sinners, it’s easy for a nihilist to leverage the ambient guilt by passing himself off as the instrument of God. If a nihilist was intelligent enough to realize that he needed rationalizations to gain power and influence towards the goal of wholesale destruction, the infinite flexibility of arbitrary religion was the tool to use. If you had managed to survive the onslaught of guilt sufficient to still selfishly value your own skin, and thought to fight — well, who would you be to cast the first stone, heretic?

In the last two centuries, the Left became the new player, and in the twentieth century eclipsed religion as the rationalization of choice for nihilism. Socialist ideology was and is the dominant rationalization for the subjugation and annihilation of people; it is not an accident that Osama bin Laden and his ilk has adapted much of it for his purposes. It is not an accident that Leftist political goals, from gun control to socialized education, invariably serve to disarm and sheepify the populace, while empowering those who seek to rule — and destroy. Their current, and hopefully last gasp, is the environmentalist movement, whose acolytes root for hurricanes and pine for the death of billions from “the right virus”. Rest assured that the only thing stopping the most consistent of them from unleashing such a thing, is lack of means… not lack of motivation.

Both of these operate using two key weapons: altruism, the idea that selfishness is evil — and the idea that morality is outside the province of reason. The second is the more fundamental, and serves to shield the first from rational inquiry.

As Auguste Comte, the man who coined the term “altruism”, wrote: “[The] social point of view cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such notion rests on individualism.” Comte understood what most people to this day refuse to understand: that selfish, thinking free men cannot be ruled and do not submit. Among a society of such men, the Joker would die, unnoticed and miserable, in a back alley knife fight.

Of course, the single word that destroys the morality of altruism is the question “Why?” Reason asks questions like those, so therefore it must be barred from getting anywhere near morality. The arbitrary cannot survive in the light of reason — so keep morality in the dark. This is the crowning achievement of Immanuel Kant, who knew that, to save religion, he had to cripple reason — and he did.

So it should not surprise anyone that not only did Kant’s efforts preserve the traditional religious sources of murderous rationalizations, but created a bizarre, quasi-secular sibling for it — the Left. This benighted movement is purified essence of nihilism; unlike traditional religions, which contain sufficient positive elements to enable long-term survival of their cultures, the Left cannot continue to exist after the demise of its target: “I’m a dog who chases cars. I wouldn’t know what to do if I *caught* one….”

In between the fall of religion and the rise of the Left, there arose an antidote — an incomplete one, alas, but nonetheless effective: the Enlightenment, with its principles of individualism and political freedom — and trust in the unlimited potential of the reasoning mind. Before its abortion at the hands of Kant, it did find expression in the form and culture of one nation — America.

I expect that it would be uncontroversial if I pointed out that, as a result, it would have been a safe bet that nihilists have not historically found welcoming soil in America. Free Americans, relatively unaffected by pernicious religious notions of innate sin or European ideals of subjugation to something “greater than oneself”, did not find themselves disarmed — morally or literally — in the face of such men. Those Hitlers born in that America, at worst, became mere criminals, or occasionally leaders of small rural communes — not national leaders.

Sadly, that is changing fast. We are still relatively safe here in America… but the continued political and culture erosion of individualism by the Left and religion has been eroding that protection for decades, and the pace has radically picked up in the last decade.

Please go back and and read what stcmac actually said and fashion some kind of reply that addresses his points. Your comments are vile and ignorant. The method of your response is that of a person without honor.

The only part of the world I’d like to see burned is the region that would like to subject the planet to a brutal theocracy (READ: ISLAM).
In the Middle East, it’s like this: PICK ONE. It’s not hard to be “indiscriminate”.

To suggest that we somehow ‘create’ terrorists or ‘more enemy combatants’ by fighting back is just plain stupid. This is like saying we “created” more Nazis, Fascist Italians, Imperialist Japanese, and (currently) more Islamic miscreants because we target them on their own turf. Again, they existed–supported and bred throughout the ME–long before our post 9/11 retaliation.

I’ve no idea why George Bush never emphasized the WMD discoveries, but it’s funny that the very media which published the reports, has always denied their existence. I always thought that anyone with at least an 8th grade reading level and a couple of firing neurons, could read the information like the articles at the links, and comprehend the importance.

BTW harebell, I’m agnostic. I don’t care for any religious culture that uses its doctrine as a tool for terrorism. It can be argued that religious fundamentalism has a bloody history, regardless of denomination. But I’ll say this: The crusaders (who fought back against the Turkish Islamic Ottoman Empire) haven’t killed anybody in what, 500 years? Terrorism in the last 90 years or so, has been carried out primarily by Islamic extremists and communist radicals (starting with Vladimir Lenin). The attacks on 9/11 weren’t committed by Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians, or wacky snake-handling Pentecostals from Appalachia.

Funny how most of the people can diffrentiate between Jews and Zionists, Hindu extremists (trying self-defence)and peace-loving hindus, KKK and other whites but insist that every Muslim, young or old, palestinian or Afghan, is a terrorist and even a baby in her mother’s womb should be cut to pieces in the name of self-defence.

There are 1 billion muslims. Had they all suicide-attack tendencies, I would have second thoughts over the survival of the world. But as we see, even when Muslims controlled most of the world, other relegions existed. India saw more than a thousand year of strong muslim rule and still the majority remained hindu. Can you imagine what cud a 1000-year rule do in a age where there was less communication and in a region as remote as india and to a people of a relegion nobody else in the world shares????

“Last 90 years saw all terrorist activities by Muslims”??? TRUE. And actually how many countries or cities or regions have been captured by muslim terrorists in last 90 years or so?? And how many areas have been captured by the christians, who BTW are all peace-loving, God fearing people just because George Bush ? How many governments have been over-thrown by them? C’mon, does anybody even want to start on the exploitation of the resources of the world by the peace-loving westerners?

My point. Just as there are zionists and jews. Just as their are good people and bad people in the world, just like that, and you dont need to be a rocket-scientist to understand this equation, there are good peace-loving muslims and world-conquering nihilist Muslims….I think all these nihilists are just people who happen to be Muslims, jews, christians, Hindus etc…

These are just off the top of my head. While some of these guys who love killing for it’s own sake (they cannot be bought off) are mere thugs and deviants like Manson who have little power outside their circle, others as noted above wield considerable power.

Indeed, James Bowman looks to the classical European state as his model for the world, and does not look at modern African, Middle Eastern, or “border state” history. Guys who love killing for it’s own sake can rise to considerable political power in places that have large tribal social structures, that are eroding, face various threats internal and external, and have enough money to buy arms (their society is not busy starving to death like say, Western Sahara).

Bowman is not merely wrong, he is deliberately not looking towards famous models of this sort of man (a nihilist who cannot be bought off, in love with killing). Models that are so well known it takes an effort NOT to think of them. Nevertheless Bowman has made the effort. Why?

Because if he were to acknowledge (“yes it moves”) the “heliocentric” nature of society today, he’d have to come up with a response to these men. They exist. They cannot be bought off. They love killing just for it’s own sake, when it gains them nothing and costs them plenty. Nuclear weapons proliferation gives them the ability to act out their urges on rich Western countries and not just their benighted countrymen. I don’t think Kim Jong-Il is interested in anything other than the usual shakedowns, but Mullah Omar or Bin Laden (or Ayman Al-Zawahari for that matter) are another story, and all are in/around Pakistan and the levers of power (tribe and faction). Ayman al-Zawahari, personally and over the objections of his followers, shot two twelve year old boys who had been blackmailed by the Egyptian secret police into bugging his compound. The Muhajideen were sympathetic, wanted the boys released, they understood what had been done to them (a cruel and barbaric blackmail) but Zawahari pantsed them, pointed to their pubic hairs as indications they were men, and shot them on the spot. That’s something out of Dark Knight. Given that Zawahari turned down a gift (he could have used the boys to spread phony info to the Egyptians) in favor of blood-lust.

@sfcmac.
Its good to actually see someone who likes the world to burn – you. You being a war veteran and all and you who advocate killing of a religion in general, it is people like you who prevent peace on earth. As long as there people like you i bet my life, there wont be peace on earth. I for one have great respect to Jesus and the christians and the bible. I love them as i love my own. and i dont want them to be eradicated like you want the muslims. Its because there are people like you who prevent us from understanding and loving there is this rift between the two faiths.

If the WMD’s were indeed discovered then we all wud have known them. Your media is so adept at news reporting that we get news flashes and headlines when a NASA scientist so much as farts. You really think that your media is hiding the discovery of WMD’s? Why? what possible agenda can they have that is greater than justifying this barbaric war on mankind? The link that you give has only “reported” and “alleged” findings of raw materials. A wmd is not a jigsaw puzzle that is assembled with a few ingredients. and oh none of the things that were in iraq come close to the destructive power which the blackguards at whitehouse have. You being a war veteran and all must surely know better.

As for as killings of civilians in wars that you so casually put i have nothing to say but this. You people have developed remarkable skills at targeting civilians more precisely than targeting the “terrorists”. good job.

And if you profess that islam is a violent religion then i openely chalenge you to refute point by point my article.

I from my part accept ANY challenge thrown by you to throw all allegations of the quran professing violence from my part. And one last thing, to say some religion is violent etc etc you need to go back to its source – the respective religious books and prove your point by giving proper quotations from it. Actions of people dont represent their religion because if it really did then we know which one has caused mass slaughter of mankind since 20th century. You being a war veteran and all surely know better.

so, ‘sfc’mac, I guess you would also advocate turning northern spain and southern france into a pile of slags – it’s home to evil terrorists after all. You would do the same to the appalachians, home to modern-day anti-fed minutemen who sees YOU as their enemy, serving in the US army. How about the state of Oklahoma? Lets bomb the crap out of it, some of McVeighs friends might have survived. Let’s destroy all of middle and south america as well, if they are not anti-american communists, they tacitly support the drugs that ruin the USofA. Northern Ireland might have some IRA-fellers who are tirering of the drawn out process that was supposed to bring self rule but seems to be going nowhere fast. Oh, do not forget to bomb me here i Europe, we have quite a few muslims here you know… evil evil muslims fading in with the local populace, so kill me too.

Did you notice how I were able to write without calling you an ‘asshat’, or a derogatory ‘sweetpea’? Oh, I just did in a passive-agressive sort of way, did I not you empty headed, vapid bint. Military ‘Intelligence’ Analyst… don’t make me laugh ばか女

so sfcmac,
are u really justifying iraq and afghanistan wars? do you want us to hail you for killing 750,000 in iraq and afghanistan? WMD’s were moonshine as it is and for bush to supposedly hide the discovery of WMD is probably the biggest joke of this century.

are u really justifying nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? pearl harbor was a military base . were hiroshima and nagasaki military bases? for god sake man, they were two cities filled with civilians!

you said it right rune cramer. “In short, the wrong people in the right positions of power can cause a lot of suffering” i now understand why the world would crumble.

so what next sfcmc? you also justify what bajrangi – the guy in the post did? i wudnt be surprized if u did. i am sure u also justify the slaughter of 1000 people in gaza which israel is doing as “self defense” against the mighty and invincible palestinian rockets which dont even guarantee an explosion. Nuking gaza wud be a good idea. isnt it? jesus would be so proud of you.

FM note about the snipped personal comment below: please post this schoolyard nonsense somewhere else. It pollutes the discussion and violates the FM site’s comment policy described in brief at the end of every post and in more detail here. Repetitions will result in future comments being moderated.

Theo, I already explained how you are {snip}, so do not want to repeat myself.

I will just ask, what do you hope to accomplish with your doubletalk? For every Koran quote about peace there can be found another about war. The fact that the Koran contradicts itself all over and is an inconsistent waste of good toilet paper, is just owing to the low nature of the pimp who wrote it, Mohammed. If you prefer we can call him a camel driver, but living off women as he did, you would call him in English, if not a pimp, at least a gigolo.

If you can’t accept that the Koran is simply crap, at least find some modernistic hermeneutics which will allow you to get past the contradictions and enter the 21st Century without thinking that you should own the planet, dominate all other non-Muslim life forms, etc.

There was apparently a movement towards a modern Islamic hermeneutics, the Reformists, but this was quashed by lowlife scum like al-Banna, Qutb, Al-Mawdudi, to whom it was apparently too painful to think. You need to follow in the footsteps of such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Mohammad Abduh, Rashid Rida.

This way, we won’t have to kill you all.

I notice the kind words you try to lay on “your Christian brethren” you don’t even bother to try with Jews. Can’t blame you. Don’t worry, we won’t make you convert to Judaism – we wouldn’t have you. Maybe the Christians would, they take all sorts of trash.

What a pity Hagar didn’t die in childbirth!

Thanks to someone above for recalling that Joker car-chasing-dog quote. Imagine the Muslims taking over the world. What would they do then? Can we even imagine how they’d crap it up?

Just remember, Star Trek has no Arabs, because it’s set in the future!

Ramses, I won’t challenge your numbers – not because they’re right, in fact they are wrong, but because you probably can’t count to 11 without taking off your shoes, so why waste time correcting your propaganda?

But I will note that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (both military targets) was actually humane and saved lives both Allied and Japanese, as well as many lives among the conquered peoples of Asia. Fewer were killed at Hiroshima, also, than by the firebombing of Tokyo and of other cities, without using atomic weapons.

And all the casualties of all the bombings, nuclear and conventional, would have been far less than those caused by ending the war without nukes, whether by invasion or by blockade of the Japanese home islands.

Japan suffered relatively little in WWII. They lost less than 4% of their prewar population compared with German losses of over 10%. And of course they killed far more Chinese, Filipinos, etc., than they suffered dead. Perhaps you would have felt better about the morality of nuking them if instead we had put Enola Gay and Bock’s Car under the command of Chiang Kai-Shek?

In other words, shut up and go away you moron, because you know nothing, are ineducable, and waste the time of your betters, which is almost everybody.

Hey, nekulturny, learn the difference between chinese and japanese before you spew garbage.

Also, I was born and raised here in Europe. I am 100% scandinavian viking stock, have you ever heard of not judging a book by it’s cover? My brother are both serving officers and I have myself done my time in the Queens Uniform. So let’s hear it again, bigotturny.

@’sfc’mac Forgot to address your vainglorious ‘Team America saved the world during WWII, {snip}
The US acted out of self interest. Going into Europe was equivalent of protecting the assets invested in lend-lease aggrements and war-loans to the UK.

oh oh it seems we have another person here who wants the world to burn.

incidents of Hiroshima and nagasaki saved lives? try telling this to the ones who died there. oh i forgot, they are dead already. so try telling that to the ones who lived through the bombings. they might bless you with eternal peace and happiness

brother ほんと, abuses will not help prove your point. people like nekulturny and sfcmac are not worth conversating. they cant be reasoned with. they might not understand the value of human live. They might understand, if the same happened to their families and loved ones.

If we kill someone, tommorow, his family will eliminate yours — it was a chain..and religion fail to cut it off.

we killing people because we want express our emptyness, people just victim of religion. actualy i`m afraid live in this world, i can die because people surround me fighting..and we call it collateral victim.

well, theoworkshop, you are right in principle. But then again, bing a cultural-christian I have grown up in an an-eye-for-an-eye culture ;)

@bigotturny You live in America? You a decendent of the native population? If not, then why the fuck don’t you get back to the place your people came feom in the first place… actually, on second thought, stay. We don’t need you here.

A couple of hundred thousand deaths in the A-bombings ended the war. An invasion would have cost perhaps a million Allied lives, and probably twenty million Japanese. Blockade of the Home Islands would have condemned the whole nation to slow starvation. OMG, you could look it up!

Also if the war had not been ended quickly, people were dying in Japanese prison camps every day; and upon news of an invasion, probably all POWs and all civilian prisoners in these camps would have been murdered. Yes, I think the survivors would bless the ending of the war.